PHIPPSBURG

There’s a great east-west divide at Popham Beach.

Ancient and at the same time ever-changing, this divide — created by a broad sand bar known as the Fox Islands tombolo — has helped create the variable and unpredictable conditions that attract and repel human activity at Popham Beach State Park.

The Patriots Day storm of 2007 also played a major role in the upheaval of conditions at the park, where the mostly public west beach was ravaged for years thereafter.

Today, Popham Beach State Park Manager Brian Murray says, the only erosion on the beach is moving west to east.

There, one owner of a large group of cottages has barricaded his property with huge boulders and planted sea grass to stem the erosion that threatens his buildings.

Murray, park manager for 16 years, recalls the Patriots Day storm of 2007 well. He couldn’t help but remember it. The storm’s tremendous tides actually changed the course of Morse River, bringing on the erosion that only recently has been stemmed.

Natural events such as the storm have changed the face of the beach dramatically over the past 16 years, and for untold years prior to that, Murray said. There is a 14-year cycle of accretion and erosion, he said.

“Before,” he said, “you couldn’t even see the water from the parking lot during low tide. We’ve gone through a period of erosion. It’s a natural event.”

Then came Patriots Day 2007.

“There were tremendous tides, and they drove the Morse River from the west,” Murray said. “Its track came right across the beach, and later it breached the Fox Island tombolo.”

The Fox Island tombolo was breached in February 2008, due to eastward migration of the channel of the Morse River.

According to the Maine Division of Parks and Public Lands, the Morse River during a falling tide has a swift current that has been flowing along the western beach for several years.

The river channel has continued to migrate north and remove sand from the beach and dunes. Sand eroded from the beach then is carried east and reworked by waves into sand bars that are elongated parallel to shore.

In 2007, there were two large bars offshore separated by a trough and the Morse River channel up against the beach. At low tide, it was possible to wade across the channel and trough and walk more than 500 feet to reach the surf zone.

“After the 2007 storm,” Murray said, “we noticed a solid stream cutting through the tombolo to Fox Island. At low tide, you could walk to Fox Island before. Usually, you could have walked all the way out to the tombolo at high tide.”

Since 2007, the tombolo has filled back in, and the Morse River has moved around.

“The Morse River was carrying sand with it,” Murray said. “That amplified the erosion. It gave the sand a consistent current. You have a conveyer belt to speed up the erosion.”

A tombolo is one or more sand bars or spits that connect an island to the mainland.

Murray and others employed by the Division of Parks and Public Lands worked hard in years following the 2007 storm to combat the erosion. They did beach replenishment, and moved in sand from a high area to mitigate the persistent scouring of the beach.

“We were afraid we were going to lose the bathhouse,” said Will Harris, director of Parks and Public Lands. “We had a real major problem on the west side up until about a year, a year and a-half ago. The ocean developed its own channel, and ate away, and just kept coming.”

The work of Murray and his crews came in the nick of time, Harris said.

“That was enough to stop that scouring,” Harris said. “From then on nature took over, and it was amazing.”

Today, Murray and his crew are readying for the onrush of beach visitors — 2,000-to-3,000 of them a day in the summer months. He is undertaking the spring research necessary to update the wooden calendars posted at the park entrance, and printed in handouts and on the beach website. There is a board for each month of the beach season, and “red days” indicate the dates and times that less beach space will be available. The higher the level indicated on the date at high tide, the less beach space.

“It got better last year,” Murray said. “The time listed on the red days say you probably don’t want to come at that time. This is an advisory.”

Murray began working on his tide predictions last week, and plans to have the boards ready for the season sometime in May.

“It will be because of the erosion of the east side that we are limiting now,” he said.

Murray pointed to a dry inner stretch of sand toward the tombolo that will stay dry. The water winds its way around that dry area and toward the shore at high tide.

“This is a classroom right here,” he said. “This is a geological classroom.”

APRIL 26: Warily watching the
east side move
TODAY: The Fox Islands “tombolo” holds sway